User:AnotherPenguin/Stories

Overview of my SciOly Career

7th Grade (2018-19)

I faded into obscurity in 7th grade and was relegated to the second team. My first invitational was Carmel Valley Invitational (yippee). We watched Arthur Benjamin (Ted Talk math magic guy) try to scam people with overpriced books that he wrote. At Mesa Robles, I got my first medal, and I didn't earn it (I was a filler for ELG lol)! At Kraemer Invitational, I learned what Anatomy and Physiology was like the hard way and for whatever reason thought, "yeah, I'll keep doing this."

Medals on a Beethoven bust following the 2019-20 season.

Medals on a Beethoven bust following the 2020-21 season.

8th Grade (2019-20)

In 8th grade, we started preparing earlier in the year, which ultimately meant more time to goof off. At the JT/Kraemer/OSCA scrimmage, I displayed my Game On potential (1st), along with placements in Code (2nd), Anatomy (3rd), Experimental (2nd). My heredity career ended with a whimper (6th in my best event, although in retrospect I might've deserved it). I blew an over two-minute lead on the timed question for Code and had to complete an entire EXPD write-up by myself in 50 minutes. We started the season with a mini-vacation to Texas. We won first place, and capped off a successful invitational by eating... Indian food in Texas. Most people would eat something more noteworthy in Texas, like, you know, steak, but instead we decided to have Indian food we already have back in California. I'm not salty. We then flew up to Sacramento and were steamrolled by Kennedy. At UTA, I had unsuccessfully created a strange flying bird with acceleration, so for Churchill, we decided to pull something completely different and make an accelerating fish. This plot saw little success, unfortunately, and I have no idea why.

To start the year known forever as 2020, we flew up to Sacramento again for Mira Loma. We amazingly did not place in Game On with another accelerating bird. We also got tiered in Experimental Design for being off-topic, but the only thing that was really off was the proctor's grading. Mira Loma distributed all of the Game Ons to each of the competing teams, so we may or may not have redesigned Kennedy's design (if Kennedy wanted they could see ours and have a good laugh, so I think that's pretty fair). Mesa Robles invitational, in Southern California, was my best invitational yet, but our team had a sick team member and lost to Kraemer. At Jeffrey Trail Invitational we crept marginally closer to Kennedy. By that, I mean we lost to all three Kennedy teams and our second team in Game On. Thanks to Umaroth (or his teammate, idk), we took the most exciting code test of all time, featuring 2600-point aristocrats with z being the most common letter. Somewhat predictably, my partner could not read his own handwriting, and we couldn't solve the timed question. Again. At Kennedy Invitational, I finally won Game On, and all it took was the topic of Heredity (it all comes full circle). A faithful replica has been created here to commemorate the moment: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/373627622. They allowed three people for Codebusters, but we still placed second as a team of two. It is only due to my utmost integrity that we didn't try and rob a third medal for our 2nd place. At regionals, we finally won Codebusters now that Kennedy wasn't there to destroy us.

9th Grade (2020-21)

In 9th grade, I joined the Northwood high team through the team tryouts. Because of the rules replay, most of my events stayed the same. By the end of the year, I did the same events as last year.

I did relatively well at BearSO, receiving colors of medals I never knew existed. At Rickards, we managed to get 6th in Fermi with no prep. I also soloed in Astronomy, so my 16th place is a reliable indicator of my overall skill. At Mira Loma, we wrote that Galileo said, and I quote, "behold the boys of the good". At GGSO, we took a code test based on myspeld ( :D ) aristocrats. As my first Anatomy competition this year, GGSO treated me with a load of histology questions.

At regionals, the team as a whole bounced back. I got a 1st place Game On medal with this beaver game on. The Codebusters test writers were nice and decided to make the longest test conceivable. My lack of knowledge about PTCH1 prevented me from succeeding in Anatomy.

This year held my first state competition. In Codebusters, we persevered through a test full of BTS quotes and entire chunks of song lyrics. I'm not sure how we got second in Anatomy, but maybe the 20 matching questions helped. And we don't talk about experimental design.

10th Grade (2021-22)

It's About Time I did a build event. And boy did I enjoy it!

Our first competition was Rickards invitational. We were fooled by the tournament directors, who 1) had us thinking we'd get the tests back in any period of time considered the near future and 2) had us thinking that we didn't place in EXPD. We were bailed out in It's About Time because they did not test for builds, beginning the cycle of procrastination.

SONI was much more exciting. We peaked in code, with one team trying what is best described as the equivalent of an Air Raid Offense (blitz aristocrats) and the other trying a conservative power run (mainly the other ciphers), and both scoring points. Anatomy was "Guess the Medicine?" and we guessed wrong. The other team had a rougher experiment than we did, you could say.

Golden Gate was bad. Plain and simple. We didn't solve timed in code. Our IAT device score was decent but Umaroth doubled our test score. We guessed what a double pendulum was. Overall, a great time!

At regionals we did the most scuffed surface tension experiment ever- using a spoon to put the water and salt/sugar solution on the penny and then measure the diameter of the resulting blob. Oh, and I swapped the terms solute and solvent.

And we don't talk about experimental design.

Event Reflection

Anatomy and Physiology (B/C): I joined Anatomy in the middle of my 7th grade year after Circuit Lab did not turn out the way I had hoped. Although I had a rough start, I eventually got the hang of studying human anatomy and physiology, and it has been one of my favorite events ever since. Over the course of my six years in Anatomy and Physiology, I have covered all of the major organ systems in great detail. Each year, I especially look forward to studying one of the three systems in detail, and last year that system was the digestive system.

Experimental Design (B/C): Experimental Design was the first event I joined. It was probably the reason I made the team; there was an experimental design section on the Jeffrey Trail SciOly entrance exam, and that was the only section I was confident in (long story short, my biology knowledge was a work in progress at the time). Through my six years in Experimental Design, I learned the details of the scientific research process, and Experimental Design engrains fundamentals of the scientific process such as the need for control variables and constants. Experimental Design never fails to shorten my lifespan (50 minutes never feels like enough time), but I always have a blast collaborating with my teammates to create the best experiments.

Heredity (B): My first love. Heredity was my first real exposure to biology. I was particularly fascinated by the different interactions of protein synthesis that result in the transformation of nuclear DNA into proteins in the cytoplasm. Although I did not compete in Heredity in 8th grade due to an underwhelming performance at a school scrimmage, I still credit Heredity for helping me discover my love for biochemistry.

Game On (B): An experience in and of itself. Middle school Codebusters was specific to Southern California, so any invitational outside of SoCal had Game On instead. In Game On, we are expected to create a Scratch game demonstrating a given scientific principle in 50 minutes. For me, Game On was a wake-up call. Like most people, I didn't take Game On very seriously at first, even after I was put in the event. But after a few less-than-stellar performances, I snapped back to focus and began practicing Game On extensively. With time I was able to improve greatly, and this culminated with a first place medal at Kennedy Invitational, my (unknowing) last middle school tournament. The scientific principle for that tournament was Heredity :)

Codebusters (B/C): I never knew I would love this event as I do today. It started as a joke: in 7th grade, I would practice cryptograms while my friends (who were in Codebusters) were practicing. But as I kept playing with them, I became more and more invested in Codebusters. I joined Codebusters in 8th grade and have blazed through Codebusters competitions with my amazing partners ever since. My recent favorite ciphers are xenocrypts, which are Spanish monoalphabetic ciphers. Applying my Spanish knowledge to cryptography has been such a thrill over this past year, and I look forward to doing it at future competitions as well :)

Astronomy (C): Definition of taking one for the team. In 9th grade, I saw that the team needed people in Astronomy and decided to join. Astronomy is hard, especially the math. I often struggled with the computational aspects of Astronomy (simply finding the correct physics equation to use was difficult). Nevertheless, I still enjoyed learning about the different deep sky objects (DSOs). Astronomy was in the same time block as Anatomy, so I could not do both. By some stroke of luck, halfway through my freshman year, the captain asked if I wanted to compete in Anatomy instead. And I never looked back.

It's About Time (C): It was my worst nightmare: a physics and build event. Prior to It's About Time, I had avoided either of those. But one fateful day in the summer before sophomore year, a board member asked me if I was willing to join the event because not enough people had signed up for it. And (somewhat unfortunately), I said sure. What ensued was two years of chaos, strife, and fun with my partner. The physics portion was notoriously vague: test writers could ask anything from simple harmonic motion to quantum mechanics. The clock portion was ridiculous: we were expected to know random clepsydra and Chinese calendar facts. But the build portion was the worst: we had to build a working timer, without using any electronic equipment. In sophomore year, we made the mistake of starting late, so we had to scrap by with a wooden device. It had its moments (and it was beautiful when it worked) but overall was highly inconsistent. But in junior year, the build got even harder. In that year, the clock had to lap and give three signals instead of one. So I scrapped the old device and built a new one from scratch, learning how to computer model and 3D print custom gears along the way. It was a bumpy ride (0 points total at BirdSO Invitational), but ultimately the clock paid off big time at the regional and state tournaments. I'm so proud of the device, and it looks so clean too :)